Increasingly, active community participation is being recognized as a critical component needed to address health disparities among racial and ethnic minority groups. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a collaborative process between individuals from the target community or community-based organizations and academic investigators through which the community is acknowledged as the primary unit of identity, efforts are developed and implemented to enhance the existing strengths of the community, collaborative relationships between the academic institution and community partners are fostered throughout the entire research process, and knowledge that is gained through the partnership is translated into specific action. A key goal of CBPR is to enhance a community's ability to address important health issues through the development of effective interventions that can be maintained over time. Despite the importance of CBPR in addressing health disparities, community stakeholders have had limited involvement in designing, implementing, and evaluating interventions designed to improve health outcomes among ethnic and racial minority groups. In response to RFA-MD-05-002, Community Participation in Health Disparities Intervention Research, we are seeking a planning grant to support the development, implementation, evaluation and dissemination of interventions designed to address health disparities in cancer and cardiovascular-related diseases among African Americans through intervention research that is conducted collaboratively between representatives from community-based organizations in Philadelphia and multidisciplinary academic investigators from the University of Pennsylvania as a part of the "West Philadelphia Consortium to Address Disparities." The specific aims of this planning grant are to: (1) develop infrastructure for community and academic researchers to undertake joint intervention research to address disparities in cancer and cardiovascular-related diseases among African Americans in West Philadelphia; (2) identify and prioritize concerns for cancer and cardiovascular-related diseases among African American residents in West Philadelphia; (3) develop, implement, and evaluate pilot interventions designed to address disparities in cancer and cardiovascular-related diseases using CBPR approaches; (4) develop resources to facilitate academic and community research partnerships in West Philadelphia; and (5) develop and implement strategies for disseminating results of interventions to residents in West Philadelphia. These activities will provide a solid foundation upon which interventions designed to address disparities can be developed in partnership between community stakeholders and academic investigators. [unreadable] [unreadable]